Residential Communities Initiative: a case study

Abstract

Military Housing is in trouble. Chronic under funding for military housing has left the Department of Defense with a $16 billion housing repair bill for 177,000 inadequate housing units. The Army alone has a $7 billion revitalization deficit. The Army estimates that 70 percent of its housing units need extensive renovation or complete replacement. However, stable or declining military budgets, especially Military Construction budgets, offer no relief. Congress is unlikely to appropriate the $7 billion, and the services are unlikely to forsake important weapons systems in favor of constructing houses. The purpose of this MBA report was to investigate and provide a comprehensive overview of the Residential Communities Initiative within the United States Army. This project was conducted with the assistance of the Monterey Bay Housing Program Executive Office and the Program Manager for the Residential Communities Initiative. The goal of this project was to analyze this initiative and compare the way the Army is privatizing housing with the initiatives that the United States Navy and United States Air Force are utilizing. We also wanted to use Monterey Bay as a case study to investigate how Residential Communities Initiative was instituted at an installation and analyze this from a business and contracting standpoint.